Child Asthma Symptoms

Symptoms of child asthma include shortness of breath, wheezing and coughing. Find out when to look for symptoms of child asthma, such as after activity or at night, with help from a licensed RN in this free video on child asthma.

Video Transcript

Hi. My name's Katyi Brosnan. I'm an RN here in Austin, Texas. And today, I'm going to talk to you about some of the symptoms of child asthma. There's a couple of main symptoms to look for. Shortness of breath is one of them, wheezing and coughing. And what's happening is somewhere along the lines with one of these symptoms, there's a narrowing of the airway, which is affecting their breathing. So if you notice shortness of breath, this is going to be difficulty breathing or inability to breathe. Wheezing, usually, is a high-pitched whistle that you can hear when they're breathing in and when they're breathing out. And then the other one is coughing. This usually happens when they're laughing or they're playing. Sometimes it's exacerbated at night, and you'll hear coughing. And the tricky thing about coughing is that sometimes that's the only way that you know that your child actually has asthma, is through coughing. And sometimes, people think that it's just a response to an air pollutant or it's a cold, but it can actually be asthma. So those are some of the symptoms to look for with asthma in children.